A Positive Year Leads to a Bright Future

This final commentary for 2014 provides me with an opportunity to go off road, so to speak, and examine what defines American Life League as we look back on 2014 and move into 2015.

It goes without saying that 2014 has been a year of blessings for American Life League in many ways. I will note just a few of the highlights, and I thankfully begin with our devastating blows against the largest abortion promoter in the nation—Planned Parenthood. In 2014, at least two dozen Planned Parenthood facilities serving 19 states closed. We praise God for that and we thank all the grassroots pro-life Americans who collaborated with us to make this happen. As many people know, ALL provides the tools but it takes hard work and dedication from our coworkers to make the really big victories come about.

In addition to this, American Life League has moved our ball down the field with the establishment of a Culture of Life Studies Program—a program designed to train future generations of pro-life Americans. Our first unit study is due to be published early in 2015.

Furthermore, St. Michael the Archangel High School, another of our stellar projects, is growing by leaps and bounds, distinguishing itself as the first culture of life Catholic high school in the country. The high school’s entire curriculum has a sharp focus on the culture-of-life principles enunciated by St. John Paul II in the Gospel of Life.

God has been very good indeed! And we anticipate even more success in the coming year. As you know, the November elections provided all of us with a golden opportunity to work with elected officials and perhaps finally get a bill passed in both houses of Congress that defunds Planned Parenthood completely. It will require a whole lot of work to accomplish this, but at least we now see light at the end of the tunnel. Of course the Obama veto pen has that end of the tunnel blocked at the moment, but in time that too will be changed. All we have to do is trust God and keep working.

American Life League’s biggest challenge moving forward is to vigorously oppose the willingness among so many to trust secular strategies and elected politicians more than we trust the power of God. We understand that we must work harder than ever before, but first we must acknowledge that, without the Lord, we are useless.

And these days as our culture furthers efforts to remove God and His law from every aspect of life, including eradicating religious freedom, we must remain ever vigilant and courageous in our defense of faith and our right to bring Jesus Christ into discussions at every level in our society.

Understanding that the culture of death is a creation of Satan himself and that the only antidote is Christ and His healing power will go a long way to moving us forward in 2015 and beyond. As Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League, wrote, “We must continue to focus our efforts on bringing Jesus into this fight at every turn—whether in church, in the home, in the streets, or in testimony before elected bodies. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 10:32, ‘Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven.’”

Finally, as we experience the joy and the wonder of Christmas and the octave of Christmas, we recall these words about the birth of Christ written nearly 80 years ago by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: "He came to the poor earth of ours to carry on an exchange; to say to us, as only the Good God could say: You give me your humanity, and I will give you my Divinity; you give me your time, and I will give you my eternity, you give me your weary body, and I will give you Redemption; you give me your broken heart, and I will give you Love; you give me your nothingness, and I will give you My all."